Unpacking research ethical stands and practices in academic institutions: A case study of a university from Ethiopia

Abstract

The present work attempts to address the ethical stands and practices of research integrity among early career professionals in social sciences research in one of the Ethiopian Universities. The major goal of the research was unpacking the institutional research ethics stands and practices, taking a case study in one institution. The method of the research was document analysis and discussion with authorities research offices. The documents assessed were, university research proposal evaluation guidelines, national research review ethics guideline, proposals initiated by young academics and completed second-degree theses in two departments, and Research Ethics Policy (2016) of the institution. The results revealed, there is a weak institutional stand towards social science research ethics. There is no single document applied in managing the ethical realms of researches among the academic staffs and students. Among the assessed 41 documents, only 29.26% tried to practice partial ethical consideration in the proposals and theses. The rest 70.74% documents never stated a word about ethics. Even those documents did not show the complete process of the researches, the challenges encountered, and failed to attach evidences in the documents. Therefore, stand towards research ethics is marginalized, and research ethical practices among the researchers, mentors, and supervisors are destructed. At this scenario, it positive to conclude that the issues of research ethics will be a challenge to the university in general and to the careers of young professionals in particular. Therefore, it needs absolute priority before too late to manage the gap.